So the 2011 budget is reasonably progressive? Indeed, budgets over the last two years have been reasonably progressive (makes one wonder how reactionary a budget has to be before it is no longer called progressive). And to prove all this, the ESRI researchers ran the numbers through their Switch tax/benefit model. The Irish Times in [...]

TASC has just issued its Budget analysis. Short, headline grabbing version: Government may have no choice but to restructure national debt unless radically different economic strategy adopted
“Current fiscal trajectory is unsustainable”
Press release:
Independent think-tank TASC this afternoon issued its analysis of Budget 2011.  The main findings are outlined in the summary below, and the full document [...]

I’ll be chairing this talk, which is on this Thursday in The Pearse Centre, 27 Pearse Street, Dublin 2, @ 8pm.
All welcome!
LECTURE SERIES
Ireland in Crisis: Challenging the Consensus
8.00pm, Thursday, 18 November 2010
Speakers: Mary Murphy (Department of Sociology, NUI Maynooth)
[...]

This article was first published in The Irish Anarchist Review
The purpose of this text is to try and tell the story of our current economic situation, how we got here, and what we can expect from the near future, so as to better understand the tasks facing us.
This is neither an academic text on history, [...]

The biggest criticism levelled at those who argue for an expansionary investment programme to restore economic growth and repair public finances is that we have no money. Yes, it would be a good idea it is conceded but unfortunately we are broke. We have to stick with the current strategy of contraction and cutbacks even [...]

There is something innately appealing about pop psychological explanations of group behaviour, particularly when applied to that most dubious of group categorisations known as a ‘nation’. To suggest that the economic policy implemented by government, which are often based on a reaction to both national and geopolitical conditions and very significant pressure from business interests [...]

William Slattery of the financial services company State Street, and a member of the McCarthy Committee, has offered some advice to the nation in its time of need. With unemployment climbing ever higher, with 250,000 jobs already shed since the start of the recession, he proposes that the largest employer in the [...]

The meeting tomorrow of the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) is being heralded as one of its most significant since the crisis began because of the potentially far reaching decisions that the new proposals for economic governance will have for every country within the European Union.
Once we find out what the European commission has [...]

In a very useful and clearly argued post on Socialist Economic Bulletin, Michael Burke illustrates how the massive bail out for banks via increasing debts to Europe’s taxpayers and cuts in government spending are creating the conditions for a renewed economic crisis in Europe. It is the significant size of the banking sector in the [...]